Princely Names
by Very Small Prophet
Summary: Who was Napoleon Bonaparte Prince? Why was Theodora Granger-Snape named after a prostitute? How did Hermione become richer than Draco? What was the worst thing Dumbledore ever did to Snape? Is Harry the Good Cop or the Bad Cop? AU, SSHG, Modified NextGen.
1. Chapter 1

Princely Names

Chapter 1: Princes and Emperors

"I've always been under the impression that it was mostly youthful rebellion on my mother's part. What better way to outrage Marcus Aurelius Prince than to marry a muggle?"

"You grandfather's name was Marcus Aurelius Prince?"

"It is one of the idiosyncrasies of the Prince clan to name their sons after emperors. I have an Uncle Hadrian and a first cousin Diocletian and twin second cousins named Titus and Domitian."

"That's horrible. It's even worse than naming children after stars and constellations like the Blacks."

"One of the things for which I forever thank my Muggle father is his stubborn insistence that I bear his name as my middle name. Otherwise I would have been saddled with the full Septimius Severus Snape. You can imagine the nickname possibilities."

"_Tim_ wouldn't have been so bad."

"You believe James Potter and Sirius Black would have settled for calling me _Tim_? It would have begun with _Sappy-Seppy_ and gone downhill from there."

"Your mother was named Eileen, wasn't she? That's not imperial."

"The daughters of the family often escape the imperial naming curse, though we have our share of Julias and Claudias. There are at least three Victorias, one of whom is still alive, and I had an unlucky great aunt named Tzu Hsi Prince."

"Oh Circe, not the Dowager Empress!"

"You recognize the name of the famous Manchu Dowager Empress? You really do read everything, don't you, Hermione?"

"The summer I was thirteen I went through a phase of reading all about the Chinese Revolution. I started with Edgar Snow's _Red Star Over China_ and went forward and back."

"Then I expect you were the one who kept Potter and Weasley carefully on the run from Death Eaters during that wretched camping year of yours. On their own I'm sure they would have made some sort of stupid heroic stand and destroyed themselves."

"_The enemy attacks, we retreat. The enemy retreats we attack. The enemy stands still_— I forget, what do we do when the enemy stands still?"

"—_we harass his communications_." Severus completed the quotation. "So you three had your very own Long March, or perhaps you should call it the Long Disapparation."

"If you'd been with us we could have been the Gang of Four."

"Yes, the mutual purges would have been delightful."

Hermione laughed. "Oh, Sev, you're the only one in the entire wizarding world who can swap jokes with me about the Muggle history of China."

"I doubt that."

"But I still want to hear about the Princes. They don't stay just with Roman emperors, then?"

"Romans are the favorites, but it's not exclusive. One of the other cadet branches has a fondness for Russian Tsars and German Kaisers. And in first decade of the nineteenth century the head of the eldest branch of the family had the audacity to name his son and heir Napoleon Bonaparte Prince."

"What? In 1810? Wasn't that something like treason at the time?"

"The family was outraged, of course, but there has always been a thin thread of radicalism in the Princes that shows up from time to time. Sir Julian had already outraged most of the clan by marrying a muggleborn witch from Marseille; naming his son after an enemy of the realm seemed rather like small beer by comparison. The Princes have had neither money nor influence for at least two and a half centuries, but they have always liked to imagine themselves the purest of the pure."

"And the most powerful of the powerful, I expect."

"They are mediocrities, the lot of them. The last member of the family to be blessed with exceptional intelligence and magical power was none other than my great-great however-many-times-great uncle Napoleon Prince. Since then there's been nobody with any sort of ability worth mentioning—magical, intellectual, artistic… Nothing!"

"Until you, Mister Half-Blood Prince."

Severus was silent for a moment and stared at her. He shrugged; false modesty did not become him. "Until me," he said flatly.

"You said Uncle Napoleon's mother was muggleborn?"

"Yes."

"Then it's obvious what the Princes need to revitalize their family line. They need a serious infusion of Muggle DNA."

"Are you volunteering?"

"If I had wanted to be a brood mare I'd have married Ron Weasley; his wife is due any day now, you know. And I just heard Ginny's pregnant with her second."

Severus said, "I believe Asteria Malfoy is in an interesting condition as well. This sort of thing happens after the end of a war, but I believe you have better things to do with your talents than re-populating the wizarding world."

"Ron never would have understood that."

They were silent for a long time while Severus caressed his lover's hair. At last Hermione spoke again. "What do you think about Helena?"

"Helena?"

"The mother of Constantine. It's a nice name, though I think I might like Theodora better."

"Wife of Justinian. You don't mind that she was a prostitute?"

"It's one of the things I like best about her, actually. She came up from nowhere. A Byzantine mudblood."

He nodded. "Theodora, then. We'll use Helena if we have a second daughter."

"And for a boy… how about Antoninus?"

He grimaced. "Antoninus?"

"Everyone makes a fuss over Marcus Aurelius the great philosopher, but I like Antoninus Pius. He's my favorite Roman emperor."

"Naturally, you have a favorite Roman emperor."

"Doesn't everyone?" she asked, smiling innocently. "Who's yours?"

He said nothing, but one corner of his mouth twitched. That was enough for Hermione, and she made a guess. "Julian the Apostate."

He said nothing.

"I'm right, aren't I?"

The twitch expanded to a small, tight smile.

"So the first boy can be Julian, and if we have a second…"

"It _has_ to be Antoninus?"

"We can call him Tony for short."

He paused, then said, "Anton."

"Anton is good." She looked up at Severus, her smile suddenly more confident. "We can give them nice Muggle middle names from my side of the family, in case they hate being named after ancient Romans."

"That should work."

Hermione silently took his hand, bring it up to her cheek, brushing her face against his knuckles. Her smile faded. She said, "I suppose we'll have to get married first."

He noticed her lack of enthusiasm and spoke cautiously. "Not necessarily."

"I don't really like the idea of wizarding marriage—and not for the reasons you probably think. It's not that I want something I can get out of. It's just that, well, I don't like having a spell doing all the work of fidelity for me. I want to _choose_ to love you, and keep on choosing every day for the rest of my life. I don't want to have magic _making_ me choose." She added quietly, "You probably think that's immoral."

"Hermione, I'm not Victorian, despite the frock coat. I grew up in the Seventies. We're the generation who made living-in-sin a standard practice."

Hermione giggled. "Living in sin?"

"It's not as if I'm a pureblood heir. There'd have to be a dozen unnatural deaths in the Prince clan to put me in that position."

"You have that many living relatives?"

"Distant cousins, most of whom I've never met. I'm from a very junior cadet branch."

"So we can just go on living together, then? I thought the wizarding world was more conservative about that sort of thing than the Muggle world."

"It is," he breathed in her ear, and she squirmed. "But I'm one of the radical Princes." He pulled away from her, looking into her eyes. "Miss Granger, will you do me the honor of living in sin with me and bearing my bastards?"

"My radical half-blood Prince." She kissed him, taking her time. "I will adore living in sin with you, Severus. Every day, for the rest of our lives."

"It's official, then," he returned the kiss. When they finally broke apart he said, "There's no hurry about the bastards, though."

"No, none at all."

-------

_Author's Notes:_

_Tzu Hsi Prince was usually called Suzie by family and friends. The Princes were not totally unreasonable._

_Asteria vs. Astoria Malfoy: I know the latter is the more common name in fandom, but I'm from the Pacific Northwest and I just can't see Draco Malfoy marrying a woman named after a city in Oregon._


	2. Chapter 2

Princely Names

Chapter 2: Draco's Epilogue

"Dad, there's Dora!" Lyra broke from her father and ran through the crowd on Platform 9 and 3/4. The man's hair was platinum and the girl's deep gold, but both had the pale pointed faces that marked the Malfoy family.

Lyra rushed up to the other girl, talking at top speed. "Dora, where's your dad? We need to talk to him. We _have_ to be in Slytherin."

Theodora said nothing. If her friend was dancing sunlight, she was quiet shadow. Her distinctive bushy hair was raven-black rather than her mother's plain brown, but it was her sense of silent focus that provided the real contrast between the two girls.

"All the Malfoys are Slytherins," continued Lyra, "and your Dad was—"

"Scor's a Ravenclaw," Theodora broke in. Unlike Lyra, she was constitutionally incapable of ignoring facts.

"Well, Scor's a brainbox." Lyra contemptuously dismissed her anomalous elder brother.

"The teachers say I'm a brainbox," Theodora said softly, looking down. It was impossible to tell whether she felt pride or embarrassment.

Lyra was not to be deflected. "But your dad was Head of Slytherin House. You _can't_ be anything but—"

Draco walked up. "Morning, Granger." Then, to his daughter: "Lyra, where are your manners?"

"Oh, sorry." She looked up at Hermione. "Good morning, Ms. Granger. It's very nice to see you." Then, with one of her sudden shifts, she asked, "Can you check the wards on my computer, please?" Despite all efforts, Draco had yet to push proper Malfoy manners into his mercurial elder daughter.

Hermione laughed. "Good morning to you, too, Lyra." She took the palm-sized computer Lyra held out to her. "Didn't your parents test the wards already?"

Lyra said, "There's lots and lots of magic at Hogwarts that could completely frazzle the quantumboards, and frizzle all the software. It's Granger shielding, so you do it best, right?"

Hermione got out her wand and checked the warding on the electronics. "Just because I invented the spells doesn't mean I'm the only one who can cast them." She smiled, adding quietly, "It just means I'm the one who gets paid when other people cast them."

_You just had to bring that up, didn't you Granger?_ Draco seethed silently. Although he was still well-off, Hermione's patents on the shielding of Muggle electronics had made her considerably richer than he was. Draco told himself he would not feel resentment. _It was the Depression of the 'teens that hurt us. It hurt all the old families_.

She handed the device back to Lyra. "The shielding is fine. It won't frizzle unless you take it through the Floo, and it shouldn't frazzle at all. Now, what were you saying about Slytherin House?"

"Dora and I have to be together in Slytherin. We _have_ to!"

"It's all up to the Sorting Hat." Hermione said. "You can ask for Slytherin, but you can't be sure."

Theodora, standing slightly behind her friend, merely shrugged. Draco strongly suspected the offspring of Hermione Granger and Severus Snape would end up in Ravenclaw, and Lyra, though not unintelligent, would not be following her there. The friendship between his sparkling, excitable daughter the quiet, serious Theodora sometimes seemed an ideal matching of opposites and sometimes merely odd. If they were Sorted into the same House Theodora would doubtless end up doing most of Lyra's homework, just as her mother had done for her own two best friends. And that would not help Lyra to learn self-discipline, which is what Draco thought she needed most.

The girls moved away, talking more quietly as Theodora pulled out her own computer and the two became absorbed with their devices.

Draco said to Hermione, "She's absolutely determined to be a Slytherin. I think she means to corner Severus and ask him to make sure she gets in."

"Sev couldn't do that even when he was Headmaster."

"I know, but try telling that to Lyra. She's convinced Daddy can accomplish anything, and if Daddy can't, Uncle Severus can." He looked around. "Didn't he come?"

"He'll be here. The boys were accidentally levitating each other out in the station and Severus stayed to Obliviate."

"Flying seven-year-olds. That must have caused excitement."

"Not much. They never got more than six inches off the ground."

"Sometimes I think all the business of sending the older children to Hogwarts sets the younger ones off. Cassie was reaching for a book to bring with her today and managed to collapse every bookshelf in the library. And you know the size of our library."

"Oh, no! Was she hurt?"

"A bruise or two. Only a few books hit her and they weren't heavy, but Asteria is staying home with her. We decided the station would be too much stimulus. She's only eight."

"Is Scorpius on the train already? I had hoped to see him. This makes three consecutive generations of Malfoy prefects, doesn't it?"

"Four," said Draco. He couldn't quite keep the smugness out of his voice.

"And the first one to get it entirely on academic merit?" Hermione teased him.

"Still missing the nuances, aren't you, Granger? Prefect is a political post by its very nature. Academics are never the only thing involved."

"Except in Ravenclaw House."

"Perhaps," Draco admitted. "You know what really bothered Scor? Rose Weasley becoming Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain. He can't stop talking about it."

"Are those two ever going to give up competing?"

"Not unless they start sleeping together."

"That won't happen," she said.

"I know." Draco gave her a calculating look, then continued with deliberate casualness, "Scor's more than willing, but he says she prefers girls."

"I didn't know Scorpius knew." Hermione was just as carefully casual. "I hope this means she's feeling more comfortable with it. When she confided in me last Christmas she hadn't told anyone else. I suggested she talk to Madame Hooch."

"Ah, Hooch—the matriarch of Hogwarts lesbians!" Then the rest of Hermione's comment registered. "Rose Weasley confided in you? I didn't know you two were close."

"Apparently I'm a sophisticated older woman who understands things."

Draco snorted. "Sophisticated? _You_, Granger?"

"I think it's because Sev and I have never married. There are still wizards who find that scandalous. You'd think it was 1921 instead of 2021."

Draco gave a half-smirk, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

Hermione said, "Rose hasn't told her parents yet, so don't say anything to them. She needs to tell them on her own."

"When do I ever gossip with Ron and Ellen Weasley?"

"You must talk to them sometime."

"Not when I can avoid it. Do you realize there will be a child of Ron Weasley in the same year as every one of my children? Rose with Scorpius, Mary with Lyra, and Emily with Cassie. And there's another girl in between, isn't there? And two or three boys."

"Just two, Hugo and little Marcus."

"And that's not even counting the cousins, whom they reckon up by dozens."

"Well, if I had married Ron the way he wanted me to, there would be fewer Weasleys in this world. I would have stopped after Hugo."

A thought struck Draco: if Granger _had_ married Weasley she might not have invented the shielding. The Weasel would never have supported her research the way Severus did. He would have expected her to play hausfrau while holding down some dull job at the Ministry. The Malfoy fortune still would have been more than halved by the Depression, but Draco wouldn't have had to suffer the humiliation of being topped by her—_again!_

"Too bad you turned the Weasel down," he smirked. "I would have loved seeing you popping out red-headed babies."

She snapped back, "Better that than a litter of blonde ferrets."

Draco realized he'd gone too far; there was real anger in her eyes. _When did Snape teach her to glare like that? Restore the truce, Malfoy. Say something nice_. "Uh, yeah. So—" He said, "I hear you've added a new wing to your mansion." He almost managed to keep the spitefulness out of his voice.

Hermione sighed. She and Draco would never truly be friends, but she recognized the olive branch. "It's not a mansion, it's a house. And we've just added a bio-chemistry lab. He's taking on a research associate, a Squib with a Ph.D. in molecular biology."

"He's still trying to link Potions with Muggle science? That doesn't sound lucrative." _Damn!_ Draco told himself. _Stop thinking about their money_.

"It's pure research. Severus adores pure research. Sometimes I think the cruelest thing Dumbledore did was forcing him to teach beginners all those years. He hated teaching, and it showed."

"Is that what finally civilized him—giving up teaching?" Draco recovered his former bantering tone. "And all this time I thought it was you."

She laughed, and peace was restored.

No, he would not let Granger's success bother him. He was Draco Malfoy, a pureblood wizard with a pureblood wife and heirs. Granger was a mudblood shacked up with a half-blood. No matter what century it was, that still mattered.

Theodora Granger-Snape was Sorted into Ravenclaw House, Lyra Malfoy into Slytherin, and Mary Weasley into Gryffindor. The next year Diane Weasley followed her sister into Gryffindor House; two years after that Emily Weasley did the same, and Cassiopeia Malfoy became a Ravenclaw like her brother Scorpius.

Severus and his Squib colleague eventually revolutionized Potions, creating the new field of bio-alchemy and garnering some of the highest academic awards in the wizarding world. Most of the profitable developments, however, were made by the more practical researchers who followed, among them Cassiopeia Malfoy. Because of its connection with Muggle science relatively few purebloods became interested in bio-alchemy, so when Cassie married a colleague the Malfoys found themselves with a muggleborn son-in-law. The company founded by Cassie and her husband, AlchiTech Ltd., fully restored the Malfoy family fortunes. Draco tried not to let that bother him either.

_-------_

_Author's Notes:_

"_Brainbox" is slang of the 2020's for a bright kid who does well in school; it is not a compliment. "Frazzle" and "frizzle" are technical terms referring to the damaging of electronics by magic. Hardware gets frazzled, software and data get frizzled, and when both are damaged it's called frizzle-frazzling._

_Yes, Draco Malfoy quotes Gilbert and Sullivan. Why not?_


	3. Chapter 3

Princely Names

Chapter 3: Harry's Epilogue

They were identical twins: black-eyed, black-haired, small for their age, and looking more like their father every time Harry saw them. One miniature Snape was bad enough, but two of them— He smiled at the boy standing in front of Hermione. "It's good to see you again… Julian?"

"I'm Anton." The defiant Snape scowl looked odd on a seven-year-old face.

"Anton," Harry said. He nodded to the other twin, "Julian." The second boy stood shyly behind his father. "I apologize for not recognizing you. You've both grown since I saw you last."

"Telling them apart is simple," said Snape. "If he smiles, it's Julian; if he glares, it's Anton."

"Don't be ridiculous, Sev," Hermione said. "Anton has a beautiful smile." She looked down affectionately, briefly smoothing her younger son's hair. "He just saves it for special occasions. The same way his father does."

Anton met his mother's eyes, his grave face just a bit softer. Then he looked away, his eyes glinting at the sight of the Weasley family bearing ice cream cones. He touched Julian's arm and tilted his head at Marcus Weasley, their age-mate, and his eight-year-old sister Emily.

"'Scuse us," said Julian. The twins ran to meet Ron and Ellen's two youngest.

The three adults watched them for a few moments. They couldn't hear what was being said but Anton stood with his arms crossed, staring with lowered brows at the two bigger children, while Julian leaned forward, talking and gesturing.

Hermione sighed. "What are those two little terrors up to now? The ice cream, I suppose. I'll go rescue Emily and poor Marcus." Hermione followed her sons.

Harry's eyes narrowed. "They're trying to steal the ice cream? I didn't think you'd be raising a couple of bullies, Snape."

"Steal it? Of course they won't steal it. The youngest Weasleys would have been persuaded to share," said Snape in his best ironic tones. "Anton threatens, Julian is re-assuring, and their victims come to see the benefits of generosity. I assume you learned the technique in auror training; the twins imagine they have invented it."

Harry nodded. "Ron and I do it all the time. _Good cop/bad cop_ it's called in the films. Ron's the Good Cop, I'm the Bad Cop."

Snape raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"I can't do grim as well as you do, Snape, but I manage. It helps to have defeated Voldemort."

"I'm sure it does."

Harry let out a sigh and looked round. Hermione had rescued Emily and Marcus from her sons and was laughing with Ron, Ellen, and Ginny; it didn't look like she would be rescuing Harry himself from her partner any time soon.

"So," he said, pointedly changing the subject, "any guesses about Theodora's House? Slytherin, I suppose."

"Possibly, although Ravenclaw seems just as likely. She is very much her mother's daughter, in more than just looks." Harry started to say something, but Snape held up a hand to forestall him. "Yes, that means she could also be in Gryffindor. Only Hufflepuff would surprise me; she has a tendency toward laziness, and prefers to slide by on talent."

"I know I was surprised when Lily became a Hufflepuff, but Ginny wasn't. Apparently I hadn't been paying attention."

"You never do, Potter." The insult was perfunctory and without bite.

"You know, before Al's first year he was absolutely terrified that he'd be Sorted into Slytherin," said Harry. "Now he's a Slytherin prefect."

"A prefect. I must congratulate him."

Harry gave a small laugh. "I suppose I should have named him for you after all."

"What are you talking about, Potter?"

"Oh Merlin, I was never going to tell you about that."

"Tell me what?" Snape gave Harry a glare beside which Anton's was a mere hesitant frown.

Harry began nervously, "Well, when Albus was born I seriously considered naming him after you. Albus Severus: Ginny would have gone along with that." Harry felt like he was thirteen again, rattling away in front of his stern Potions master. "If Nagini had actually killed you…"

Snape's scowl deepened.

"I mean, martyrs aren't round to be smug about it, are they?"

"I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you, Potter." Snape's voice was icy.

"I should have done it, though." Harry said with sudden seriousness. "You deserve at least as much credit for what I did as Dumbledore. And you were a lot braver about it. He mostly sat in his office and manipulated us. Not entirely, of course, but…" He looked away. "It still makes me angry sometimes. It's what I think about when I need to be threatening at work: what I'd like to say to Albus Dumbledore."

Snape was silent, taking a few moments to calm himself; it was his turn to change the subject now. When his face was neutral he said, "Hermione was saying today that she fully expects Julian and Anton to be Sorted into Slytherin when the time comes. One can't predict so far ahead, but I could easily imagine them going into two different Houses. I recall that happened to a pair of identical twins in your year."

"Parvati and Padma Patil, yes," Harry said. "What do you think: Good Cop into Gryffindor and Bad Cop into Slytherin?" Harry looked embarrassed. "Sorry. Reflex action."

"No, you're right, though at this point I think Julian could become a Hufflepuff as easily as a Gryffindor. Separating them wouldn't matter much in any case: they're far more loyal to each other than to any outside connection. Unless this changes over the next few years, they would certainly treat two separate Houses as belonging equally to both of them. I have no doubt they would share passwords and house tables along with everything else."

"Their housemates wouldn't like that."

"I doubt that would stop them."

"No, not if they're anything like you."

"Hermione tells me that if I had had Julian's charm as well as Anton's ability to intimidate, _I_ would have been the Dark Lord."

Harry looked appalled.

"One of her little fantasies," Snape said mildly. "Now, I believe I will speak with the younger Mr Potter about his prefectship. If you will excuse me."

One year after Emily Weasley and Cassiopeia Malfoy enter Hogwarts, Marcus Weasley is Sorted into Hufflepuff; Julian becomes a Gryffindor and Anton a Slytherin. Assisted by Marcus in Hufflepuff and Cassie in Ravenclaw they wreak havoc on the House system by entirely ignoring the principles of House rivalry. Julian is charming, Anton is intimidating, and together they get anything they want.

The End


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